Thursday, November 12, 2009

The good thing about renting a car along with a driver when you're a tourist is that your driver knows places you don't.

As soon as we landed, we asked the driver to take us to Ubud so we can have some suckling pig, but our driver took us for a short pit stop at Trisna Bali Agrowisata (agro-tourism) on the way.Trisna Bali is a small garden/farm growing a variety of fruits native to Indonesia, including mangoes, mangosteen, rambutans, and more. This was my opportunity to introduce my guests to salak, a tropical fruit they (and probably you) had never seen before.

Lacking any other English name for it, they called it snakeskin fruit. You'll see why:Salak is a curious fruit. The inside contains three lobes of firm and crisp meat, similar in texture to an apple although firmer and not as juicy. A good salak is sweet and a little tart, but the moistness depends on the variety you're eating.

Per popular request, here is a photo of the inside taken from Salak's Wikipedia page.When we visited, they gave us a small cup of the Balinese hot chocolate for free, complete with cinnamon sticks!But of course, since we were in Indonesia after all, we had to get some Kopi Luwak.

Kopi Luwak, peaberry coffee, or whatever other name it goes under, is the most expensive coffee on the planet and is made with ... civet poop.Luwak is a civet native to Indonesia that eats coffee berries and apparently knows enough to only eat the best quality berries. So when they poop out the beans, those coffee beans are some high quality coffee beans!Also, the civet's digestive systems supposedly helped break down the coffee beans in such a way that makes the coffee that much better and more intense to drink.

They roast their own coffee here. As I've said though, they are a small farm/garden in Bali, so if you were expecting a coffee roaster a laIntelligentsia, think again. Here's how they roast coffee:Yup, by hand, over the fire, for hours and hours. Makes one appreciate it more.